The Philadelphia Flyers fell to the Carolina Hurricanes in overtime at the PNC Arena.
Hoping to close this poor six-game road trip out with a win, the Philadelphia Flyers headed back east to face off with the Carolina Hurricanes in the first half of a back-to-back. The Flyers were looking to avoid a four-game losing streak while trying to take the season series from the Hurricanes with a third straight victory over them this year. Brian Elliott got the nod from Head Coach Alain Vigneault and opposed James Reimer on the other end of the rink.
You may want to sit down before you read this, but the Flyers actually had a solid start to the first period against the Canes. Travis Konecny scored the game’s first goal just over 30 seconds after the puck dropped, beating Reimer with a seemingly harmless wrister to give his team a 1-0 advantage. I didn’t know hockey teams from Philadelphia were allowed to take early leads in a road game and was pleasantly surprised TK’s goal wasn’t waved off for being “Too Favorable For The Flyers.”
Michael Raffl followed that up with a tally of his own, as Jakub Voracek capitalized on a bad turnover from Carolina in the defensive zone and found the Austrian forward for his fourth goal of the year. Again, a good thing? In the first period? On the ROAD?! What is this madness? Unfortunately, but honestly pretty predicably, Carolina went on the score two straight goals of their own and tied everything up at two following 20 minutes of action.
So…the initial half of the second period certainly could have gone better for our Orange and Black fellows. Carolina scored two goals on their first three shots of the stanza, quickly taking a 4-2 lead over the Flyers just a few minutes into the period getting underway. Both goals, which were scored by Jake Gardiner and Joel Edmundson, were ones Elliott probably should’ve come up with, especially in Edmundson’s case as it was a point blast Elliott saw the entire way. Nicolas Aube-Kubel did get one of those goals back, later on, potting his second tally of the season to put Philadelphia within one heading into the third.
Philly was awarded their second power-play of the game in the beginning stages of the third and thought they found the equalizer, as the puck squeezed passed Reimer and found twine. However, a quick whistle from the referee made its’ appearance on yet another potential Flyers scoring play, and the goal was disallowed. Typical. Anyways, the Flyers found the game-tying goal anyways off of the stick of Travis Sanheim, who pulled an around the world-type move and beat Reimer with a low shot for his fifth goal on the year. Neither team scored in regulation after Sanheim’s tally, and this game went to overtime where Dougie Hamilton scored the game-winner to put the Flyers away, 5-4.
Listen, I’m happy the Flyers were able to muster up a point out of this game, but it was still a tough loss to swallow. They finally kept a game within reach after letting mistakes snowball in the previous couple of games and even battled back to tie things up late in the third. Sadly, Elliott couldn’t help Philadelphia out when Hamilton took advantage of a stickless Sanheim and now have a four-game losing streak staring them in the face because of it.
The Flyers are now 22-16-5 on the season. Next game is Wednesday against the Washington Capitals.